What is the right way to use Browserify transforms server-side?

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Because Browerify assumes you use Node's own require() server-side while RequireJS (and now also AMDRequire) have their own module to provide an enhanced require function. The closest I could come up with (besides giving up and precompiling to a single file before calling Node) is using the deprecated "require.extensions" to preprocess the file, similar to requirejs loaders, e.g. for handlebars you could add in your Node start:

  var fs = require('fs');
  var Handlebars = require('handlebars');
  require.extensions['.handlebars'] = function (module, filename){
    var code = fs.readFileSync(filename, 'utf8');
    module.exports = Handlebars.compile(code);
  };

I'm sure I'm missing something very obvious here.

The compilation step that browserify uses is little more than concatenate + a little bit of sugar. Practically speaking why does this matter?

I'd much prefer to deliver less code to the client if possible, so I don't see the rationale for adding a dependency on a dependency manager.

I used RequireJS for a while and it isn't bad, but Browserify has a lot of advantages like compatibility with Node.js and npm (while the only disadvantage I see is that the compile step is non-optional).

> I'd much prefer to deliver less code to the client if possible

requirejs shim isn't signifcantly larger than what browserify adds, it's only 200 lines.

I'd be very interested in seeing a set of benchmarks comparing browserify to r.js. I'd be very surprised if the difference was meaningful, since they do basically the same thing. In fact, doesn't r.js support CommonJS-style requires?

Update: My other love for requirejs is that you don't need to use relative paths when requiring a module. Once you have a relative path, you can't change the location of either dependant or dependency. The require config lets you separate what you call the module from the location of the file.

https://www.npmjs.org/package/requirejs

https://gist.github.com/spenceralger/946ddc6c55d997d4a028

I guess I can see the value in this, if you're retrofitting a new module in the AMD style to an existing node application which does not use that style.